The Bank of Ghana wants to inject $800 million to help stabilise the fall of the cedi, here’s how optimistic they are because this strategy may work

The initiative is to help stabilise the local currency (cedi) against international currencies. Head of Financial Markets at the central bank, Steven Opata, made this revelation to in an interview.

According to him, the accumulation of more dollars would help increase the net international reserve (NIR) to around $4 billion. This will be enough to provide confidence in the system and help stabilise the free fall of the local currency.

The cedi since the start of the year has experienced much weakness since it has not been able to compete with other foreign currencies. The cedi lost 3.6 per cent of its value to the US dollar.

This has caused some apprehension among the business community, prompting various private sector associations to urge the central bank to find a solution to the depreciation to help abate the impact on their operations.

The business community further advocated for the introduction of the Chinese currency, the Yuan as a major trading currency to help stabilise the cedi.

However, the BoG’s Head of Financial Markets said the bank is aware of the current weakness and are putting in strategies to stabilise it. Such was adopting rebuilding reserves to face more systemic shocks that may come.

He was very optimistic that it will not be long before Ghanaians see stability and some recovery in the cedi.

“The central bank used about $560 million to support the cedi against shocks last year and that saw the net international reserves declining to $3.8 billion in December last year. We will inject the $800 dollars to help the cedi again,” Mr Opata noted.